Well, I ordered a PlayStation TV because they're cheap and I have an income now.

What should I get for it? Persona 4 Golden seems like the obvious answer, though I never finished the game on PS2 and I must admit some trepidation about starting all the way back at the damn beginning.

Also could use some advice on hacking the thing, if anybody's done it. Apparently most hacks require a PS3? In which case I might get one, in which case I wouldn't get the Vita version of the FF10/10-2 remaster. (Or I might just ask my brother-in-law if I can use his.)

Thad wrote:Oh yeah, HBL's definitely going on there and I've been using the PSP version for years. Wololo's a good site.

I don't have a whole lot of VN experience (somebody gifted me Hatoful Boyfriend but I haven't gotten around to trying it) but I definitely prefer the VN portions of Persona 4 to the dungeon-crawling.

I don't do a lot of VN stuff either, but 999/VLR struck me as one of the games that had the strongest positive response.

norn was super into 999/VLR. I haven't played them, but reviews were consistently good and norn's taste is okay sometimes. Dangan Ronpa had a kind of...um...enthusiastic fanbase too, if you like that kind of thing, and I think there was one of those for PSV.

I was really interested in Gravity Rush (which Def mentioned) but IIRC its control shortcomings killed the experience.

Dragon's Crown was also available for PSV, if you don't have it on PS3 already, and if you feel like trying out Vanillaware's (Odin Sphere, Muramasa) RPG-i-fied take on Golden Axe.

Also, if you're into Disgaea, I think the definitive versions of D3 and D4 were on PSV.

I personally kind of like handhelds as a way to wind down and fall asleep, so RPGs are good for that. (So are puzzle games, I guess. The Professor Layton games were fantastic, but they're [3]DS exclusive.)

You won't be able to play Gravity Rush on the PSTV because of it's tech-demo control scheme (swipe screen to dodge, press two fingers to the back touchpad to slide, etc.). They fixed it up for the PS4, presumably, but couldn't even be arsed to update their flagship Vita game to not use the rear touchpad so that it's playable on the PSTV. Not a single fuck was spared while developing this product.

You already have access to the Wii version of Muramasa, but the Vita version is prettier (which is a big deal for Muramasa) and is a pleasant enough waste of time. Plus there's DLC to buy if you want to grind through four more characters. Dragon's Crown is practically the same game on Vita and PS3, which means there's no reason to turn your nose up at the PSTV version.

I've only played the PS3 version of Malicious, not the expanded Vita/PSTV version, but it's kind of interesting. Maybe try it on sale.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted is surprisingly fun. It's not nearly an exclusive and it's an EA game, but beggars, choosers, etc.

Ragnarok Odyssey Ace has a pretty good demo. I can't say more about it than that, but it's worth your time to try that much out for yourself.

TxK might be the most exciting Actually-Still-Exclusive for the Vita that's playable on the PSTV, although it's really just a minor iteration of Tempest. Do you like Tempest? There you go.

Ys: Memories of Celceta is sadly not compatible because they shoehorned in some rearpad bullshit.

Also, you can play a whole bunch of PSP and PS1 games on the thing too. But, again, you probably could do that already, and in a much fancier way.

Yeah, which is why we're here. I've always liked picking up cheap consoles on their way out; I bought a Dreamcast for $100 in the summer of '01 and, even if I don't break it out that often anymore, I'm still very pleased with the purchase.

Hell, there's even a part of me that's bummed I never got a Virtual Boy when they were $20 new. (Which reminds me, Nintendo really needs to port Wario Land 3D to 3DS. I'd even be fine with a version that just replaces the different shades of red with arbitrary colors, though obviously the better choice would be a 3D Classics upgrade.)

For awhile I was bummed that I never got a top-loading NES, until I found out they didn't take RCA connectors. The important thing is that I did get two of the dogbone controllers, and still have them.

But I wonder if the Vita version would be easier on my eyes; I've complained previously about the decision to choose a menu font that, while perfectly legible on a computer monitor two feet from my face, makes me go all squinty trying to read it on a 51" 1080p plasma from across the room.

I haven't been able to get any homebrew running yet, but it turns out it's pretty trivial to overwrite the whitelist. It turns out you can write arbitrary data by opening a corrupted E-Mail attachment. (Side note: you probably want to set up a unique E-Mail address explicitly for your Vita for this. One that's easy to re-enter, because you'll have to set it up multiple times.) Ys is working fine.

It occurs to me that the makers of proprietary devices have created a situation where security vulnerabilities are desirable for customers, and security patches are undesirable. This has some pretty terrible long-term implications that DRM apologists may want to consider.

But obviously it's totally worth it on Sony's end, because look how much money the Vita has made.

Thad wrote:SO! I picked up Memories of Celceta on the Vita, and it's pretty great! (Except it turns out that it really does break as soon as I got to the first touch puzzle, and I'm trying to figure out a workaround that doesn't involve just patching the firmware, because I want to be able to run homebrew and stuff.)

some nice people on Wololo told me where to find the setting to toggle touchscreen emulation. Its placement is simultaneously very convenient and not as obvious as it should be: it's on the menu you get when you hold down the Home button, below the Power Down/Standby buttons.

On the one hand, it was hard enough to find that I needed somebody to tell me where it was, and it wasn't on by default. On the other, it's a really good place to put the thing, as I discovered shortly after turning it on and then accidentally activating it every time I pushed the joystick a little too hard. This is a setting you really need to be able to toggle on and off with minimal interruption of the game.

Exploit due to be released tomorrow; lets you copy whatever the fuck you want to your memory card. Will run homebrew; won't break DRM. Requires firmware 3.60, so if you've been holding off on running patches, now would probably be a good time, before Sony releases the inevitable patch that breaks it.

I'll probably wait until some people actually run the thing on a PSTV and confirm that it's working, but...I should probably hurry once that happens.

So I have to say, thanks to Henkaku (google it yourself, I see no reason to link something like that here), I finally got out of my vita exactly what I wanted when I first bought it.The OLED is *perfect* for retro gaming. That shit just pops wonderfully. The SNES emulators are both pretty damn good, with the exception of audio.

I haven't installed it yet; I'm kinda waffling on it. If I upgrade to 3.60 then I lose the ability to sideload PSP games (ie run games I've already purchased without purchasing them again/run the fan translation of VC3). Then again, they probably don't look as good on a PSTV as they do on PPSSPP anyway.

The original posting suggested that, while the team that developed Henkaku won't be porting it to any earlier firmwares, other people might do it in the future. I might just hold out for that, on the assumption that a day will come when I can run Henkaku and PSP games.

Course, given that I've got a PSTV and not a portable Vita, and given that the PSTV is hooked up to the same TV as a Windows PC, the utility of running emulators and old PSP games on my Vita is pretty significantly diminished.

Seeing as the Vita's reached the point where it's still getting good games but not on physical media, I decided to check on the state of Vita cracking.

Vita Update Blocker doesn't work, and apparently hasn't for a year and a half. I'm not sure if QCMA still works on a regular Vita with a USB cable, but it definitely doesn't work with wifi (ie the PSTV). Oh well. I didn't need to buy more games anyway.

Henkaku has a successor; it's called taiHENkaku and it sounds like it's going to be a pretty big deal. Latest release is beta 6, which apparently has made progress toward portability to older firmwares (a good thing for me since I'm still on 3.20). Nothing much doing yet for me but I'll keep an eye on it.